[timmygrover]

Hey, so I'm running ff vii with pete's opengl2 2.9, and everything that the emulator has to actually render looks great (all the characters, npcs, treasure chests, doors, basically everything that moves). I'm wondering if there's any way to make the pre-rendered backgrounds look any sharper. It's a little sad to have Cloud looking so sharp and the background looking so gritty.

Thanks!
timmygrover

 

[Princess Garnet]

Turning down the resolution and/or using filtering and/or smoothing is all you can do.

Blowing a 320x224 2-D image up to 1280x1024 or more is obviously not going to end well. It'll end up pixelated. Forget everything about larger resolutions making better visuals. That's true for 3-D, but opposite for 2-D. It's a trade-off to find the best balance. These games just aren't HD, so using HD resolutions and expecting everything to be really sharp and crisp isn't going to help. You have to live with it and tweak until you find a balance between 2-D and 3-D you most prefer.

 

[lagunareturns]

or play it on a old sd tv via computer or by using a real ps1

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

try not to use Shader smoothing, that turns everything extra blurry.

 

[Princess Garnet]

I can't play without smoothing. I have screen smoothing on, as well as shader smoothing on maximum. It's an absolute pixelated mess to me without it.

You're going to have to choose between pixelated, blurry, or some mix. Either way, you can't get "sharp and HD", which is what I think the topic creator was inquiring about. Many people are under the assumption that these high resolution displays and powerful PCs of today should be able to make sharp, crisp, HD Playstation games, when, as you and I know, there's alot more to it than that.

 

[fivefeet8]

I can't play without smoothing. I have screen smoothing on, as well as shader smoothing on maximum. It's an absolute pixelated mess to me without it.

You're going to have to choose between pixelated, blurry, or some mix. Either way, you can't get "sharp and HD", which is what I think the topic creator was inquiring about. Many people are under the assumption that these high resolution displays and powerful PCs of today should be able to make sharp, crisp, HD Playstation games, when, as you and I know, there's alot more to it than that.

Would be interesting if we could do texture replacements for such things.

 

[timmygrover]

If only ps games had the mod-ability of Oblivion and Fallout. I guess this is why we have to keep petitioning square for a ps3 remake
Remake Final Fantasy 7 Petition

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

I can't play without smoothing. I have screen smoothing on, as well as shader smoothing on maximum. It's an absolute pixelated mess to me without it.

You're going to have to choose between pixelated, blurry, or some mix. Either way, you can't get "sharp and HD", which is what I think the topic creator was inquiring about. Many people are under the assumption that these high resolution displays and powerful PCs of today should be able to make sharp, crisp, HD Playstation games, when, as you and I know, there's alot more to it than that.

I prefer the pixels over the blur.

 

[Princess Garnet]

I wonder if part of it is maybe in the difference that I use a CRT at 640x480, and as far as I know, you're using an LCD at 1920x1200. You're almost forced to run native, which itself almost pretty much forces you to run in a window, probably a "larger" resolution size one (running outside native, or fullscreen at 1920x1200, either will be a mess). To me, with the setup I use, the backdrops look exactly as smooth as it originally did on the console, which is by no means too blurry to me. It's not HD, no, but it's not too blurry because of that either.

Or perhaps I just can't stand the pixelated look that much. It absolutely destroys one of the best parts of the visuals. When I first started emulating (this game), I ran at 1024x768, and I got about halfway through the game before I was fed up with it. I really don't see how people can play at something crazy like 1680x1050 fullscreen and think it actually looks good. Then again, most people emulating probably haven't played it before, and probably don't own the game, so they don't know what to compare it to, or what they're missing, and so on.

 

[timmygrover]

I can't believe you made it half way through, I couldn't get through the first reactor before I quit. I play it at 800x600 windowed. That way I can watch dragon ball at the same time

 

[Princess Garnet]

I was talking about Final Fantasy IX. It's been so long since I played Final Fantasy VII, and I never played it via emulation. In my playthrough, I was actually changing the settings up alot as I went, as I was still learning and tweaking and experimenting as I went, but it was roughly halfway through before I set upon deciding to do away with the "higher resolution is a good thing and a feature of emulation" garbage, and just settling upon one configuration.

I'm also surprised you're running 800x600. I assumed you were using a larger resolution, as that's where it's mainly noticeable. If you don't mind a little blurriness, you can try my configuration. It aims to make the backdrops as smooth and unpixelated as possible, without compromising 3D (ala, like software rendering would). It's mostly meant for fullscreen (ala, thus CRTs), but since you're running window anyway, it'll work just as well on an LCD.

http://forums.ngemu.com/psx-plugin-questions-troubleshooting/105158-my-authentic-enhanced-guide.html

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

i just discovered that epsxe is forcing vsync by default. thats new... never used to in 1.6.....